All I can say is ” 🙂 “. On its way back for its third and last flyby on Nov. 13, 2009, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft captured this beautiful photo of our planet. The illuminated crescent shows the south polar region, with some of Antarctica’s sea ice reflecting brightly through the swirling clouds….
Tag: Earth
A Look Back Home
This image shows the Earth as seen by NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper aboard the Chandrayaan-1 orbiter, India’s first lunar scientific satellite. Earth’s colors appear as super-saturated blue, green and white through the mapper’s eye, which is designed to analyze the composition of the moon’s surface and help look for possible water resources for use by…
It’s a Small World
Another wonderful image from the Apollo Image Gallery, this scanned film image shows the ascent stage of the Eagle lander as photographed by Neil Armstrong, with the partially-lit Earth floating in the black lunar sky above. This is how our world looks from 239,000 miles away. Basically it would look 4 times larger than the…
Will Worlds Collide?
According to a June 10 article in New Scientist, studies on the variable nature of planetary orbits have shown some valid possibilities of collisions in the future. (The very distant future, luckily for us.) Due to the nature of Jupiter’s massive gravitational pull on the inner planets, especially Mercury, their orbits are susceptible to incredible…
Spotlight on the Sun
This month, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory focuses on our solar system’s real superstar: the sun! The video below highlights historical observations of the sun and shows some recent robotic missions that have brought back groundbreaking data about our celestial sovereign. The photo illustration above approximates the comparative size of the sun to our planet Earth….
No Such Thing as Global Warming?
 Tell that to the Wilkins Ice Shelf. At least 10,000 years old, the 1/3 mile wide span of ice that linked Antarctica to nearby Charcot Island broke apart on April 5, 2009, as expected by scientists watching worldwide. This collapse opens a path for icebergs from the rest of the disintegrating swath of ice…
One Last Look Back
The Messenger spacecraft took this photo of Earth as it sped off toward Mercury in August of 2004. This view of our planet shows the western coast of South America, with the Peruvian Andes curving around and down into Chile before disappearing into the dark of night. Just above and to the right of the…
Total Eclipse of the Earth
Japan’s KAGUYA satellite took this photo of Earth from its orbit around the Moon during a penumbral eclipse – the positioning of the Earth between the Sun and Moon – on February 10, 2009 with its high-definition camera. This is the first time such an event has been photographed from the Moon. During a penumbral…
Portrait of Home
It’s important to know where you came from. When it was on its way to the red planet in the summer of 2003, Europe’s Mars Express turned its camera and got a photo of the Earth and Moon. This is what we all look like from 5 million miles away. By the time it reaches Mars,…
Lights in the Dark 